much of a theologian, though he attended chapel regularly of a Sunday
evening. His ideas of heaven were drawn mainly from certain popular
hymns, which depicted the life of the redeemed as a perpetual practice
of psalmody.

"What sud I be doin' i' heaven," he asked, "wi' a crown o' gowd on my
heead and nowt to do all day but twang a harp, just as if I were one o'
them lads i' t' band? What mak o' life's yon for a chap like me, that's
allus bin used to tug an' tew for his livin'!"

"Nay, Job," his wife replied, "but thou'll be fain o' a bit o' rest when
thy turn cooms. It's a place o' rest, that's what heaven is; thou'll
noan be wanted to play on t' harp without thou's a mind to."

"I can't sit idle like thee, Mary," Job answered. "I mun allus be doin'
summat. If it isn't Steel Works, it's fox-huntin'; and if it isn't
fox-huntin' it's fettlin' up t' henhouse, or doin' a bit o' wark wi' my
shool i' t' tatie-patch."

"Thou'll happen change thy mind when thou's a bit owder," was Mary
Hesketh's answer to this. "When I'm ower thrang wi' wark on a
washin'-day, I just set misen down on t' chair and think o' t' rest o'
heaven, an' I say ower to misen yon lines that I larnt frae my muther:

"I knew a poor lass that allus were tired,
Shoo lived in a house wheer help wasn't hired.
Her last words on earth were, 'Dear friends, I am goin'
Wheer weshin' ain't doon, nor sweepin', nor sewin',
Don't weep for me now, don't weep for me niver,
I'm boun' to do nowt for iver an' iver.'"

"Ay, lass," Job replied, "that's reight enif for thee. Breedin' barns
taks it out o' a woman. But it'll noan suit me so weel."

I did my best to reason with Job and to enlarge his conception of the
life to come and of the progress of the soul after death, but I made
little impression on his mind. A heaven without forges, fox-hunting and
hen-coops offered him no possible attraction.

"What thou says may be true," he would answer, "but it'll noan be Job
Hesketh that's sittin' theer. It'll be somebody else o' t' same name."

Thus did he fall back upon his ever-besetting fear of loss of
personality in the life hereafter, and, like his Biblical namesake, he
refused to be comforted.

The agony which Job Hesketh was enduring did not make him listless. On
the contrary, it seemed to give him new energy. It is true that the old
pleasure had gone out of his work and play, but to him work and play
meant life, and to life he clung with the